The investigation of the relationship between mothers' emotion socialization behaviors and children's emotion understanding skills

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between mothers' emotion socialization behaviors and emotion understanding skills of children. Sample consist of 50 children who continuing preschool and their mothers in center of Ankara. Emotion socialization behaviors are investigated in terms of "modeling, contingency and emotion teaching". Mixed methods research design is used. As data collection tools, One Frog Too Many which is a wordless book, emotion cards and diary which mothers were kept, Denham's Affect Knowledge Test, TEDİL,The Coping With Children's Negative Emotions Scale, Self Expressivennes In The Family Questionnaire, Mother Child Data Sheet are used. In qualitative data analysis content and descriptive analysis are used. In quantitative analysis independent samples t test, ANOVA, Mann Whitney U test, Kruskall Wallis test are applied. As a result of the study, it is found that there is not a significant relation between mothers' modeling behavior and children's emotion understanding skills. A negative relation between mothers' anxiety, punishment, expressive encouragement and problem focused reactions and children's emotion understanding skills are found. In reading wordless book, mothers used explaining method mostly. In talking with children they use questioning method mostly. There is a positive relation between the socialization method that mothers use while reading books and children's understanding of emotions while a negative relation between commenting method and emotion understanding skills. It is found that there is a positive relation between mothers' socialization and clarifying method usage and children's emotion understanding skills while they are talking with children. Key words: preschool, emotion socialization, modeling, contingency reactions, emotion teaching, emotion understanding.